Characterization of Read/Write Head Shield Asperities in Hard Disk Drives

Abstract

A new way to characterize asperities on metallic surfaces at the nanometer scale is proposed. Asperities are often treated using conventional statistical descriptors such as average and root mean square roughness, which do not provide adequate mechanistic insight into surface defect formation and mitigation. The new rationale revolves around developing a mathematical description of the evolution of the area occupied by asperities at each height slice on a topography image, with direct implications on how asperity instances are tracked and their risk of breakage leading to potential exposure and degradation of the metal surface upon thermo-mechanical stresses during the operation of read/write heads is assessed. The technique was shown to be disruptive by surpassing all other surface quality metrics, such as conventional roughness and static area % asperity at 0.5 nm height, in its ability to statistically differentiate surfaces coming from various manufacturing process iterations tailored to produce different surface conditions in the hard disk drive industry. A theoretical formulation proposing that the static asperity technique is fundamentally insufficient, is presented and validated experimentally.